Today at Noon: Bike Lane Debate at the Daily Politics

Today at noon I’ll be venturing over to the Daily News’ Daily Politics blog to participate in a live chat about bike lanes. The debate, which the Daily News has assigned the unfortunate title “Bike Lanes: Good or Evil,” was prompted by the paper’s editorials on cyclists using the wrong side of the Manhattan Bridge during the current construction detour. The series seems to have wrapped up today by observing that the vast majority of cyclists obey the construction detour rules, without actually admitting that this has been the case all along.

While the whole “Good or Evil” subtitle to today’s debate is sure to raise hackles (not to mention nydailynews.com pageviews), just think of this as an opportunity to reach out beyond the community here at Streetsblog. The facts about bike lanes are on our side, and so is public opinion. The live chat is open to everyone, so if you want to join in and marshal the arguments for bike lanes, come on over. Let’s keep it cool, calm, and collected, and avoid playing into the expectation for conflict that seems to accompany most media coverage of street safety issues.

A car killing an innocent child (as happens frequently on NYC streets) never prompts the Daily News to ask the question, “are cars evil?” Yet, when a member of the Daily News staff is buzzed by a bike, the bicycle existence as a mode of transportation is discussed as a fundamental question.

This sort of mindless reporting does real harm to NYC by creating a false perception that bikes are more dangerous than cars. If NYC is to make its streets safe for our children, then its media outlets need to get educated about the basics of transportation and street safety. These thoughtless rants distract policy makers from making real street safety improvements.

http://twitter.com/snogglethorpe Miles Bader

@773958881f62e37b6d0725bcc2218ccf:disqus These paper don’t care about such things, they only care about pandering to the prejudices of their readers…